Lovin’ Spoonful: Blueberry Plum Jam

Blueberry Plum Jam: A Super Summer Flavor Combo

Early October is a time of year when my kitchen becomes my garden and orchard’s waiting room, where bags of fruit and flats of vegetables vie for counter space and my attention. Not that I’m complaining about an avalanche of farm fresh produce, it’s just such bounty waits for no one. The fruit flies and fungi are just waiting for me to make a false move. Decisions must be made and actions taken in a timely manner; do I eat it, can it, store it, freeze it or compost it?

Blueberry plum jam before the setting point, when I test the flavor on a bowl of ice cream or yogurt.

Lucky for me plums and blueberries are a little more forgiving and tend to hold a week or two under refrigeration. That said, I finally got around to making a new flavor-combo jam: blueberry-plum. I grew the blueberries, and the Italian plums were a generous gift (along with peaches and nectarines) from the Washington State Fruit Commission. (They…complete…me.)

Taste-testing is an integral part (at least for me) of jam making, followed by some inspired fingerprinting.

Betting on the plum’s creamy sweetness as a fine foil to the blueberry’s tartness, I embraced this fruity marriage (after ample sampling) as an essential jam in my canning repertoire. The recipe follows:

Blueberries and Italian prune plums: a match in the orchard, which led to a honeymoon in the kitchen.

Hi Tom! I am also fortunate to live in the Pacific Northwest, albeit towards the southern end, and have plums and blueberries in deep freeze stasis waiting to be transformed. I so want to make this jam, but I don’t have a scale and have no idea how to measure two pounds. Any chance you could break that down into cups for me?

Tom that jam looks wonderful. On an unrelated note: I found out about the Chapin Bucket Irrigation Kit on Pinterest, and thought you might be interested… if you Google it… it might be an easier way to water your large garden… 🙂

I very much like that you do not have much sugar n your jam – 600g for about 1500 g of fruit. Using plums rounds out the flavor an help in thickening, I suppose?
This is the time to use frozen berries from the summer now… and actually make jam. No plum though :(. Italian plums are rare and precious here… an certainly not t have in November.

This is my first year harvesting my plum tree and until I found this site I had no idea what to do with so many plums! I am making this yummy jam right now actually, and I am no jam expert, but it’s ok not to add pectin??

Love making jam! Plum us a specialty if mine. I used 4 lbs plums, 24 oz frozen blueberries and a bit extra lime. My plums were sweet so I found this a little too sweet for my tastes. Wpill make again with less sugar.